Blood Sisters (44 page)

‘So how’s it going?’

‘I think we’re making some progress. It was what I suspected right from the beginning, because so much explosive was used, at least ten per cent more than was necessary for the job in hand. You don’t need three hundred grams of Semtex to blow up a mobile home. You can bring down a two-storey building with fifteen hundred grams. I’m absolutely sure that this device was put together by Fergal ó Floinn, the same fellow we suspected of that Merchants Quay bomb.’

‘Just because he used too much Semtex?’

‘Ó Floinn was always what you might call
over-precautionary
. When he was blowing safes in Limerick for the Duggans there were two occasions when he didn’t just blow the doors open, he blew the safes clear out of the buildings they were in and halfway across the street. But, no, it’s just not that. Everything about the Spring Lane device says ó Floinn. It’s the fussy way the wiring’s been done, with the ends twisted into a figure of eight, and the detonator was one of a batch that was stolen years ago from that slate quarry near Killoran, which ó Floinn always used.’

‘All right, Bill,’ said Katie. ‘Of course, there’s already a warrant out for ó Floinn’s arrest for the Merchants Quay bombing, but I’ll talk to Superintendent Pearse in the morning to have another alert circulated. I’ll also ask Mathew McElvey put out a new appeal through the media. The only problem is that even the latest pictures we have of ó Floinn were taken about fifteen years ago. He probably has white hair by now, if he has any hair at all, and a beer belly on him.’

‘Somebody must know where he is,’ said Bill. ‘After all, somebody hired him to blow up Paddy Fearon. How did
they
find him?’

When she had finished talking to Bill Phinner, Katie looked at her tea and saw that it had infused for so long that it was almost black. She tipped it away and switched on the kettle to make a fresh mug. She suddenly felt very tired. She could hear John still talking on Skype, and from what he was saying about pharmaceutical sales projections it sounded as if his conversation was going to go on for at least another half-hour.

She took her mug of tea into the bathroom and ran herself a peach-scented foam bath. When it was ready she wearily undressed and climbed into it. Her breasts were beginning to feel swollen and tender, and even if she didn’t have a baby-bump yet there was no doubt that her waist was thickening. She thought it strange that she couldn’t clearly remember her pregnancy with Seamus and this was almost like having a baby for the first time. Maybe that was God’s way of making sure that women had more than one child. After each pregnancy, He wiped their memories clean, especially their recollections of how much it had hurt.

John came into the bathroom and sat on the side of the bath. ‘How’s my beautiful merrow?’

‘Beat out, to tell you the truth. I went to see the father on the way home.’

‘Oh, your dad. Good. And what did he have to say to you?’

He said:
Tell him. You should
.

‘Not much. But he’s looking so much better now that Bláithín’s looking after him.’

Tell him
.

‘That’s great, Listen, if you want to get yourself dry, I’ll knock up a couple of sandwiches for us. Ham okay? Or would you rather have cheese?’

‘Cheese would be grand. But just the Coolea. Not that stinky French stuff you got from the market.’

Once he had left the bathroom, Katie sank down into the water so that her breasts floated and she was bearded with bubbles. She had to tell him. She knew that he would be hurt, and jealous, and that it wouldn’t be easy for him to raise another man’s child even if he agreed to do it. So far, he had probably attributed the changes in her mood and her tastes to her usual PMT, but she wouldn’t be able to hide it very much longer.

She heard him singing to himself as he made the sandwiches, ‘The Fields of Athenry’. It brought tears to her eyes again and she had to tell herself, ‘Stop crying, you fool, would you? Will you ever stop? You got yourself into this, now you get yourself out of it!’

It was after 11.15 p.m. when Riona walked along the stable block and knocked at the door of the small lean-to annex at the end where Dermot lived. She had to knock again before he opened up, and when he did he squinted at her as if he didn’t recognize her. The living room behind him was foggy with cigarette smoke and he smelled of drink. On the table in the middle of the room she could see an open tin of tuna with a fork beside it, and a half-empty bottle of Paddy’s.

‘She should have cooled down by now,’ she said. ‘It’s been more than an hour since you switched off the hog roaster.’

‘Oh. Yes. Sure,’ said Dermot. ‘I’ll get my jacket. Is it still lashing out?’

Riona didn’t answer but waited under her umbrella while Dermot struggled into his jacket and then pulled on his mud-encrusted rushers.

They made their way across the rainy stable yard and Dermot pushed open the stable door and switched on the lights. The smell of roasted flesh still lingered, but it had almost faded now and the stable smelled more strongly of straw and horses.

‘I took a lamp inside after I switched it off,’ said Dermot. ‘If that had been a pig, like, instead of a nun, I’d have said that she was fierce overdone.’

Riona said, ‘The Romans were supposed to have roasted people in the brazen bull for days, until they were nothing but bones, and when they took the bones out they said they shone like diamonds. They used to make necklaces out of them.’

‘Cracked, them fecking Romans, if you ask me.’

Dermot unlatched the hog roaster and with two loud clangs the stainless-steel covers dropped down on either side. Sister Aibrean was curled up on the metal tray with her knees bent and her hands up under her chin. Her skin was shiny and dark brown, so that she looked more like a giant insect than an elderly woman. Riona approached the hog roaster and looked down at her. In places her bones had broken through her flesh, so that Riona could see her elbows and her ribs and her pelvis.

So this is all she ever amounted to
, she thought,
God’s devoted servant, who bullied me and demeaned me and took away my precious boy. Underneath that frigid white skin she was nothing but a jigsaw puzzle of old bones, with a nasty, pious, self-righteous brain nestling inside her skull
.
Well, now that skin has been roasted and that brain has had all of that nastiness and piety and self-righteousness cooked right out of it
. She leaned over Sister Aibrean’s brown, blind face and spat in it.

‘Jesus, you really hate them fecking nuns, don’t you?’ said Dermot, shaking his head. ‘What do you want to do with her? We could grind her up, like, and mix her with the horse cubes and then nobody would ever know what had happened to her, would they? I can’t see the shades analysing nobs of horse shit, can you, to see if they can find a nun in one of them?’

‘I
want
people to know what happened to her, Dermot!’ snapped Riona. ‘I
want
them to know how she suffered before she died! How many times I have told you that is the whole reason we’re doing this? Why do you think we sent up Sister Mona with those balloons? For the fun of it? Why do you think I told you to throw Sister Barbara in the fountain? If they simply vanished, what would be the point of it? They’d be gone and after a week or so nobody would care that they’d vanished, or wonder where they’d gone to, or why.’

‘If you say so,’ said Dermot. ‘I think we’re taking a fierce risk myself. But then, you’re the one who’s paying.’

‘Yes, Dermot, I’m the one who’s paying. So can you go and wake up Conor, since he’ll probably be asleep by now, and we can take Sister Aibrean down to Cork. I’ll tell you where I want you to put her on show.’

Dermot frowned at the body in the hog roaster. ‘I hope she’s not going to fall to bits when we try to take her out of there.’

‘No, she’ll stay in one piece all right. Besides, I’m going to dress her again. That’ll help keep her together.’

‘You’re going to
dress
her again? Lamb of the Lord Jesus, rather you than me!’

‘You’re going to help, Dermot. I can’t manage it on my own.’

Dermot said nothing more. They both knew that he could walk out any time he wanted to, but then he would have nowhere to stay and no money, and where would a man with a record of criminal detention in a psychiatric hospital find work and a bed to sleep in?

Between them, Riona and Dermot lifted the metal tray out of the hog roaster and laid it on the floor. Dermot took out a clasp knife and cut the cords that were binding Sister Aibrean’s wrists and ankles. Then he straightened out her arms and legs, with a crackle that sounded like pistol shots, kneeling on her knees with all of his weight and bending her arms back until he dislocated her elbows.

When he had done that he held her body up clear of the tray while Riona pulled on her habit, knotting it loosely around her waist, and then her scapular. She didn’t bother with her drawers or underskirts. Finally, she fitted Sister Aibrean’s cowl over her brown, grinning face, and pinned on her scarf.

‘Would you look at the state of that?’ said Dermot when Riona had finished dressing her. ‘That’s like something out of the nightmares I used to have about nuns when I was a kid. My mate Pauly told me that all nuns looked like fecking great spiders underneath their habits and that’s why they only showed you their faces and their hands. Scared the living shite out of me, that did.’

‘Go and wake up Conor,’ said Riona. ‘I’ll go and get my coat and fetch the Range Rover around. Oh, and bring that cord, too. We’re going to be needing it to tie her into position.’

Katie dreamed that she was standing in front of the grotto in Ballinspittle where, in 1985, the small statue of the Blessed Virgin had been seen to move and breathe, and which ever after had become a place of pilgrimage.

In her dream it was night-time and very dark, but the Virgin had a halo of stars which were lit up and illuminated her stone-white face and the huge red roses that had been placed all around her.

Katie had visited the grotto the week after little Seamus had died. She didn’t really believe in miracles, and even the bishop of Cork and Ross had been very cautious about acknowledging that the statue might really have moved. But since the doctors hadn’t been able fully to explain why Seamus had died, and in spite of all of her prayers God had remained silent, she had gone to Ballinspittle to see if she could find some kind of an answer.

She hadn’t seen the Virgin move and she hadn’t heard Her speak, but all the same she had found some measure of comfort standing in that country road, in the drizzle, with nobody else around. And here she was again, in her dream, although she wasn’t aware that it was a dream.

She looked up at the Virgin and said, ‘You know where Seamus is, don’t you?’

The Virgin opened her eyes and turned her head to give Katie a tender smile. ‘Yes,’ she said, softly. ‘Seamus is coming back to you.’

‘You mean –
this
is Seamus? This baby I’m carrying now? I’m going to give birth to Seamus all over again?’

The Virgin nodded and closed her eyes, but Katie was so shocked that she woke up with a jolt, feeling that the ground had suddenly given way from under her feet.

She opened her eyes. It took her a few seconds to realize that she was in bed in her house in Carrig View. The bedroom was totally dark except for the red numerals on the digital clock – 3.27 a.m. She turned over to face John and she must have woken him up, too, because he shifted himself closer and said, ‘Katie? Are you okay?’

‘Ah, sure, I’m grand, thanks. I was dreaming, that’s all.’

‘Nothing too sexy, I hope,’ he said, and kissed her forehead, and then the tip of her nose, and then her lips. ‘Not having an orgy, were you, with a crowd of other fellows?’

She kissed him back and said, ‘You don’t ever have to be jealous of me, darling.’

He lifted the hem of her short nightgown and ran his hand right up her back, stroking her between her shoulder blades.

‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘That feels good. You should have been a professional masseur.’

‘What? Rubbing the arses of wobbly old women all day? No thanks. You’re the only woman I want to massage.’

He slid his hand around and started to fondle her breast, gently rolling her nipple between finger and thumb until it stiffened. Even though her breast was so tender, she began to feel aroused. She could feel his breath against her face, and he was breathing harder and she could see his eyes glistening in the darkness.

She kissed him and said, ‘Hold on,’ and sat up in bed so that she could pull her nightgown over her head. Then, naked, she turned back to him and held him close to her. Somehow it made it more exciting that she could hardly see him in the darkness, but she could feel his muscular shoulders and the crucifix of hairs on his chest.

He caressed her hip, which made her jump, and then his fingertips trailed across her stomach and between her legs. She was already very wet and slippery, and he slid one finger up inside her while he slowly rotated the ball of his thumb over her clitoris.

‘You’re like a god, you know that,’ she whispered. She opened her thighs wider and John knelt up between them. She reached down and cupped his balls in the palm of her hand and then she took hold of his stiffened penis and guided it into herself. When he entered her, she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a long
oohhhh!
of pleasure and release. With John holding her and kissing her, and his hardened penis so far up inside her that it gave her little shivers, all of her anxieties seemed to dwindle into nothing but a single spark, and then even that spark winked out. All she could think of was him and how wonderful he was making her feel. His smell, and the tautness of his muscles, and the brushing of his hair against her bare skin.

‘Oh, Katie,’ he gasped, and he began to push himself into her faster and harder. ‘God almighty, what you do to me.’

After a while, though, he drew himself out of her. ‘Turn over,’ he panted and laid his hand on her hip to help her get up. She knew what he wanted because they often used to do it like that, with Katie on her hands and knees. In that position, he could enter her even deeper, and even harder, until she could almost believe that his penis was going to come out of her mouth.